The Bible's Compatibility with Theistic Evolution

[David Kent]

So you are actually saying that women pastors, priests and ministers are not of God but are in disobedience to His Word?

When the CoE introduced women priests, I was asked at work if I believed in women priests. I said "Yes and No" Someone said "I might have thought I wouldn't get a straight answer from you." I said "I do not believe that there is a office of priests in the church, male or female, but I do believe in the priesthood of all believers." No I don't believe that women should be preachers or pastors as Paul said women should not have authority over men in the church.

 

[Presbyterian Continuist]

What does scripture say? Can you quote relevant scripture?

You know the only two reference Paul makes so you can read them for yourself. If what Paul says is absolutely correct, then the Anglican, Presbyterian, and Methodist churches are apostate because they have women priests, elders, and ministers. Is that what you truly believe? If you don't believe that, then you have to believe that Paul may have written correctly with reference to his own culture, but necessarily correct for ours. The Amish people refuse to use modern technology because they can't see any reference to it in the Bible. So if you drive a motor car instead of a horse and buggy, and it is not mentioned in Scripture, does that mean that you are out of favour with God? Do you think that if Paul was alive today and he saw women priests and ministers winning souls for Christ, would he speak against them?

 

[DavidFirth]

You know the only two reference Paul makes so you can read them for yourself. If what Paul says is absolutely correct, then the Anglican, Presbyterian, and Methodist churches are apostate because they have women priests, elders, and ministers. Is that what you truly believe? If you don't believe that, then you have to believe that Paul may have written correctly with reference to his own culture, but necessarily correct for ours. The Amish people refuse to use modern technology because they can't see any reference to it in the Bible. So if you drive a motor car instead of a horse and buggy, and it is not mentioned in Scripture, does that mean that you are out of favour with God? Do you think that if Paul was alive today and he saw women priests and ministers winning souls for Christ, would he speak against them?

Please quote the two scriptures so that we can study exactly what they say and stop generalizing.

 

[redleghunter]

Science cannot explain miraculous events, right? Unless science has an explanation for how Jesus was born of a virgin, how Jesus stilled the storm and the waters, raised the dead, gave sight to the blind, healed the sick, was raised from death Himself, etc... All real events science cannot explain and transcends to the deeper truth upon which all of creation rests. The creation week was all miraculous. Point here is just to show that there are causes outside of the physical universe that affect reality, affect matter, created life (and overcame death) that cannot be possible if one only considers naturalistic causes.

The same invisible force that healed the paralytic when Jesus spoke the words, "Now I say to you, rise up, pick up your mat, and go home" is the same invisible force that created light on Day 1 when God said, "let there be light".

Amen!

 

[Presbyterian Continuist]

When the CoE introduced women priests, I was asked at work if I believed in women priests. I said "Yes and No" Someone said "I might have thought I wouldn't get a straight answer from you." I said "I do not believe that there is a office of priests in the church, male or female, but I do believe in the priesthood of all believers." No I don't believe that women should be preachers or pastors as Paul said women should not have authority over men in the church.

So you believe that Aimee Semple MacPherson, Maria Woodworth-Etter, and Kathryn Khulman, who were responsible for thousands of converts to Christ, were motivated by another spirit and all their converts were false? Those ladies won more permanent converts to Christ than all the male ministers and preachers in their generation.

 

[DavidFirth]

So you believe that Aimee Semple MacPherson, Maria Woodworth-Etter, and Kathryn Khulman, who were responsible for thousands of converts to Christ, were motivated by another spirit and all their converts were false? Those ladies won more permanent converts to Christ than all the male ministers and preachers in their generation.

Do you make such generalizations about everything people say?

 

[Presbyterian Continuist]

Please quote the two scriptures so that we can study exactly what they say and stop generalizing.

What! You know where those references are. You don't need me to quote them to you. And you have your own opinion about them so there is nothing I can say that will convince you otherwise. So please, let's have a bit of honesty here.

 

[redleghunter]

What does scripture say? Can you quote relevant scripture?

@Oscarr and @DavidFirth

Brothers,

Perhaps we should take the women in ministry discussion elsewhere and let Deadworm have this creation discussion proceed?

 

[Presbyterian Continuist]

Do you make such generalizations about everything people say?

This is just pettyfogging and now you are flaming me, and that is against the forum rules. Anyhow, this is getting off topic, which is partly my doing, so I am going to stop answering these posts because I have said all I am going to say. But if you continue to get personal, I will report you.

 

[Presbyterian Continuist]

@Oscarr and @DavidFirth

Brothers,

Perhaps we should take the women in ministry discussion elsewhere and let Deadworm have this creation discussion proceed?

That's a good idea. I was the one who took the discussion off topic. The discussion about Paul and women ministries should be on the Controversial Theology forum in another thread.

 

[DavidFirth]

What! You know where those references are. You don't need me to quote them to you. And you have your own opinion about them so there is nothing I can say that will convince you otherwise. So please, let's have a bit of honesty here.

This is just pettyfogging and now you are flaming me, and that is against the forum rules. Anyhow, this is getting off topic, which is partly my doing, so I am going to stop answering these posts because I have said all I am going to say. But if you continue to get personal, I will report you.

No, but if you quote the verses you are referring to I will show you how you are generalizing them out of context and you know it. I'm not flaming you but I'm calling you out in that you can't prove your point from scripture and you know it.

Now everybody else knows it, too. I'm done with you now, you may think what you will and report whatever you wish to report.

Have a good night, sir.

 

[Deadworm]

Once the original use of the 7-day creation story to justify Sabbath rest is grasped, the theory of 6 24-hour creation days can be challenged on 4 grounds:
(1) God rests on the 7th day (the Sabbath) and we are still living in the 7th day of divine "rest" from creation! The 6 creation "days" each conclude with the phrase, "Evening came, morning followed, the first (2nd, etc.) day," but no such phrase concludes the 7th day because there is no transition from God's day of "rest;" indeed, we are still living in this 7th day.

(2) The earth's rotation around the sun accounts for our 24 hour days. But the sun is only created on the 4th day (1:14-16). So it is absurd to limit the first 3 creation days to 24 hours.

(3) The Hebrew "yom" can refer to some unspecified period of time, as in "the day of the LORD" (as e.g. Amos 5:18) or "the day when you came out the land of Egypt..."--a reference to the period of the exodus (Deut. 16:3). From this perspective a day "in God's sight" can be like 1,000 years and 1,000 years like 1 day (so Psalm 90:4; 2 Peter 3:8).

(4) A literal interpretation of Genesis 1:1-2:4 forces us to picture God as a "guy" who looks just like us. 1:27-28 uses statue language to claim that we are created not only in God's "image," but also in His "likeness." Unless we can take this imagery poetically, we need to dismiss this creation story as false and very primitive mythology.

Similarly, a literalistic interpretation of the 2nd creation story (the story of the Fall) forces us to accept these 3 absurdities that posters have so far ducked:
(1) the idea that modern snakes crawl without limbs simply because they must be punished for the talking Snake's role in seducing Eve (3:14)
(2) the idea that reproduction is created by the punishment of Eve (3:16)
(3) the unanswerable question of where Cain got his wife (4:17) and where the other people in his life came from, if they are not the offspring of Adam and Eve

 

[redleghunter]

Similarly, a literalistic interpretation of the 2nd creation story (the story of the Fall) forces us to accept these 3 absurdities that posters have so far ducked:
(1) the idea that modern snakes crawl without limbs simply because they must be punished for the talking Snake's role in seducing Eve (3:14)
(2) the idea that reproduction is created by the punishment of Eve (3:16)
(3) the unanswerable question of where Cain got his wife (4:17) and where the other people in his life came from, if they are not the offspring of Adam and Eve

(1) what makes pre fall accounts absurd?

Do you think the crossing of the parted Red Sea by the Israelites as absurd? Was that not a miracle?

(2) not about reproduction but birth pain.

(3) so what? Cain coupled with a sister. Ewww for us now but not then.

Have to ask...

How did the fall of mankind happen? If not the Adam and Eve account then where do we get the original assurances of our redemption?

 

[Tom 1]

Science cannot explain miraculous events, right? Unless science has an explanation for how Jesus was born of a virgin, how Jesus stilled the storm and the waters, raised the dead, gave sight to the blind, healed the sick, was raised from death Himself, etc... All real events science cannot explain and transcends to the deeper truth upon which all of creation rests. The creation week was all miraculous. Point here is just to show that there are causes outside of the physical universe that affect reality, affect matter, created life (and overcame death) that cannot be possible if one only considers naturalistic causes.

The same invisible force that healed the paralytic when Jesus spoke the words, "Now I say to you, rise up, pick up your mat, and go home" is the same invisible force that created light on Day 1 when God said, "let there be light".

Yes, I agree, and when Jesus called Lazarus from the tomb for example there is no ambiguity - Jesus called him back from the dead. John 11 contains a straightforward, literal description of this event. But, as Genesis 1 doesn’t describe how e.g. photons were formed and began to emit visible light John doesn’t describe the process by which Lazarus’ spirit returned to his body, or how his flesh was renewed - there is no need to, although the lack of this description does not negate that some sort of process took place as a result of Jesus’ words. Beyond that, comparing the two passages, there are problems taking Genesis 1 in the same way as a practical description. If, for example, you take the phrase ‘and God said’ what is actually meant here - does this mean that God has vocal chords and speaks as we do? Is that a stupid question? Or is it necessary to ask questions of that sort in order to understand the text? Is this just familiar language being used figuratively to describe something we don’t understand? In the verse above does ‘and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters’ mean literally that a physical manifestation of The Holy Spirit was literally ‘hovering’ over a ‘deep’? And what is ‘the deep’ - deep water? If so, is the deep being used as water is in other places in the OT and NT to signify chaos, or rebirth, or in some other figurative way? These are the kind of questions that separate out the different uses of language in the bible, not the demands of trying to ‘make the bible fit science’. This is why many early Christian writers didn’t take the creation account to be literal. Once you get past that and start looking at what the creation account was meant to convey in its original context, it starts to make sense, e.g. as a contrast against other beliefs, to set out the whys, whats and wherefores of God, man and the created universe, so that we can begin to know who God is and how to relate to him, and to each other. The only passages in the bible that come to mind for me as being something that might fall into the domain of science are some of the dietary regulations in Deuteronomy etc.

 

[Deadworm]

redleghunter: (1) "what makes pre fall accounts absurd?"

Ah, so a literalist like you imagines that snakes crawl without limbs as a punishment for the Serpent's seduction of Eve? And your literalistic mindset believes that humans are created in His "image and likeness (1:26-27) and therefore look like a "God guy" so human in appearance that He goes for a stroll in the Garden (3:8).


"(2) not about reproduction but birth pain."

Nonsense! There is no hint of procreation in the 2nd creation story; nor is there any contrast between painless an pain-free birthing. By the same token, consider Adam's curse: There is no implicit distinction between Adam's sweat-free work prior to the Fall and his need to work "by the sweat of your brow" afterwards."

"(3) so what? Cain coupled with a sister. Ewww for us now but not then."

Sorry, there's no evidence of any other children for Adam and Eve. Indeed, Cain is forced to become a wanderer and live in exile away from his family and needs to worry that "anyone who meets me may kill me (4:14)." So where do all these other people in distant places come from? Hmmm

"How did the fall of mankind happen? If not the Adam and Eve account then where do we get the original assurances of our redemption?"

A Fundamentalist student once asked theologian Karl Barth: "Dr. Barth, was there or was there not a snake in the Garden of Eden?" Barth wryly and aptly replied, "It's not important whether there was a snake. What's important is what the snake said."
Remember, the Fall resulted in humanity becoming "like us (God), knowing good from evil (3:24)." Do you actually believe it would have been better if Adam and Eve had avoided the forbidden fruit and thus missed out on the chance to learn good from evil? No, God foreordained that humanity would be born with a fallen nature (Romans 11:32), and this myth offers profound symbolic imagery to demonstrate the nature of evil.

"Do you think the crossing of the parted Red Sea by the Israelites as absurd? Was that not a miracle?"

First, the Hebrew makes it clear that it's not the "Red "Sea," but rather the "Sea of Reeds." The same word is used for the reed basket in which the baby Moses was hidden. So this points to the marshy lakes east of Goshen as the locale for any sea crossing. The actual Red sea is too deep and jaggedly hilly in terrain for a walkthrough.
The best explanation for what might have happened is provided by the eyewitness account of Alexander Tulloch to the parting of a Reed Sea near Goshen in 1882:

http://www.weatherwise.org/Archives/Back Issues/2011/January-February 2011/red-sea-full.html

There is a scholarly consensus that this miracle never happened--a consensus I don't share. Moses didn't compose the Pentateuch and certainly didn't recount the story of his own death! Modern scholars rightly reject that claim in favor of the JEDP source theory. Still, despite considerable embellishment, the story strikes me as basically true, but then I believe in a God of miracles and have even experienced miracles.

For example, the alleged number of slave escapees is 600,000 men (Exodus 12:37)--2 million counting women and children. The claim that so many Israelites could survive in the desert for 80 years with virtually no water taxes one's credulity. No, it's not plausible to imagine enough water from a rock to satisfy the thirst of 2 million people!
I also find it troubling that there is no archaeological evidence for such a huge 80 year migration of people through the wilderness and no evidence outside the Bible for so massive an escape and defeat of the pursuing Egyptian army. No, I don't think it's satisfactory to claim that the Egyptians simply suppressed this event. The other details that are hard to swallow include the contest before Pharaoh in which even the Egyptian "wise men" can turn their staffs into snakes (7:11-12)!

 

[Marvin Knox]

The biblical account of the creation and fall of man is completely incompatible with the evolution of man - theistic or otherwise.

While I would never say that a believer in theistic evolution is not saved --- I will say that that believer is "foolish and slow of heart to believe in all things, Which the prophets have spoken". Luke 24:25

One thing I remember from my studies in the book of Proverbs is that we should never argue with a fool.

 

[redleghunter]

Ah, so a literalist like you imagines that snakes crawl without limbs as a punishment for the Serpent's seduction of Eve? And your literalistic mindset believes that humans are created in His "image and likeness (1:26-27) and therefore look like a "God guy" so human in appearance that He goes for a stroll in the Garden (3:8).

You assume a lot. God did say:

“Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the sky, and over the livestock, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

Maybe you have been hanging out with Mormons, but created in the image and after the likeness of God does not entail being a "God guy."


What are you going to tell me next? YHWH did not say “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but you shall not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; for in the day that you eat of it, you will surely die.” ?

The only 'guy' mincing words in Genesis 1-3 is the serpent. He told them a half truth. Like we are getting with this OP subject. You may want to slither away from it. You may lose your arms and legs!

Who said the serpent seduced Eve? Quit your strawman man.

Nonsense! There is no hint of procreation in the 2nd creation story; nor is there any contrast between painless an pain-free birthing. By the same token, consider Adam's curse: There is no implicit distinction between Adam's sweat-free work prior to the Fall and his need to work "by the sweat of your brow" afterwards."

A logical fallacy. Just because it is not mentioned does not mean it did not happen.

There were no "Big brother" cameras in the Garden. What we have is what YHWH reveals.

Sorry, there's no evidence of any other children for Adam and Eve. Indeed, Cain is forced to become a wanderer and live in exile away from his family and needs to worry that "anyone who meets me may kill me (4:14)." So where do all these other people in distant places come from? Hmmm

Adam and Eve were commanded to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.

“Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

Therefore plausible Cain was referring to future kin or kin already being raised as we see Adam and Eve just did not have Cain, Abel and Seth:

The days of Adam after he became the father of Seth were eight hundred years, and he became the father of other sons and daughters. All the days that Adam lived were nine hundred thirty years, then he died.

The order of these 'other sons and daughters' is not indicated. What we do know are the first born hereditary males of Cain and later Seth (after the death of Abel). When were the daughters born? We don't know. From creation it is a male hereditary dominate culture and the names and order of birth of the female children is not mentioned (women are usually mentioned by exception as in Sarah). Genesis 5 makes this clear.

Therefore, it is your literal blinders which create a textual tension which does not exist when taking in all the evidence.

Remember, the Fall resulted in humanity becoming "like us (God), knowing good from evil (3:24)." Do you actually believe it would have been better if Adam and Eve had avoided the forbidden fruit and thus missed out on the chance to learn good from evil? No, God foreordained that humanity would be born with a fallen nature (Romans 11:32), and this myth offers profound symbolic imagery to demonstrate the nature of evil.

You avoided my question by adding in your eisegesis of the subject matter. This is what I asked:

How did the fall of mankind happen? If not the Adam and Eve account then where do we get the original assurances of our redemption?

Notice I made no inquiry on whether or not the avoidance of the fall was "better" as you put it.

Yet it is noted you do not see Genesis 3 as the account of the fall of mankind via Adam and thus passed on to his seed. You just see humans who originated from primordial goo at some point becoming sentient and never were in perfect sinless union with YHWH. Therefore, every NT reference to Christ being the "second Adam" and our redemption is null and void and I can't wait to hear about how you view this and the miracles of the NT.

First, the Hebrew makes it clear that it's not the "Red "Sea," but rather the "Sea of Reeds." The same word is used for the reed basket in which the baby Moses was hidden. So this points to the marshy lakes east of Goshen as the locale for any sea crossing. The actual Red sea is too deep and jaggedly hilly in terrain for a walkthrough.
The best explanation for what might have happened is provided by the eyewitness account of Alexander Tulloch to the parting of a Reed Sea near Goshen in 1882:

Ok, thanks you deny the OT miracles of an uncreated Creator reaching into His own material creation with supernatural demonstrations of His Power. You approach the Bible from a materialistic perspective. Why not just be forthcoming in the OP?

There is a scholarly consensus that this miracle never happened--a consensus I don't share. Moses didn't compose the Pentateuch and certainly didn't recount the story of his own death! Modern scholars rightly reject that claim in favor of the JEDP source theory. Still, despite considerable embellishment, the story strikes me as basically true, but then I believe in a God of miracles and have even experienced miracles.

Name the scholars and I will show you they are either not Christians sources or are Tubigen liberal skeptic theologians. Which the JDEP is based on 19th century liberal skepticism and thus by the early 20th century refuted.

For example, the alleged number of slave escapees is 600,000 men (Exodus 12:37)--2 million counting women and children. The claim that so many Israelites could survive in the desert for 80 years with virtually no water taxes one's credulity. No, it's not plausible to imagine enough water from a rock to satisfy the thirst of 2 million people!

Again you deny YHWH performed supernatural miracles to demonstrate His sovereignty and power. Why am I not surprised by the above statements. The miracles either happened or they did not, you are saying 'did not.' Let everyone take note so they know what they are dealing with in this thread.

I also find it troubling that there is no archaeological evidence for such a huge 80 year migration of people through the wilderness and no evidence outside the Bible for so massive an escape and defeat of the pursuing Egyptian army. No, I don't think it's satisfactory to claim that the Egyptians simply suppressed this event. The other details that are hard to swallow include the contest before Pharaoh in which even the Egyptian "wise men" can turn their staffs into snakes (7:11-12)!

There is an account. It's called Exodus. Again, you are siding with specious skeptics who deny the existence of God or claim the title Christian but hold to unorthodox theologies as in open theism.

I guess I have to back up the truck a bit more. Did Jesus Christ perform supernatural miracles or were those all materialistic coincidences?

 

[NobleMouse]

Yes, I agree, and when Jesus called Lazarus from the tomb for example there is no ambiguity - Jesus called him back from the dead. John 11 contains a straightforward, literal description of this event. But, as Genesis 1 doesn’t describe how e.g. photons were formed and began to emit visible light John doesn’t describe the process by which Lazarus’ spirit returned to his body, or how his flesh was renewed - there is no need to, although the lack of this description does not negate that some sort of process took place as a result of Jesus’ words. Beyond that, comparing the two passages, there are problems taking Genesis 1 in the same way as a practical description. If, for example, you take the phrase ‘and God said’ what is actually meant here - does this mean that God has vocal chords and speaks as we do? Is that a stupid question? Or is it necessary to ask questions of that sort in order to understand the text? Is this just familiar language being used figuratively to describe something we don’t understand? In the verse above does ‘and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters’ mean literally that a physical manifestation of The Holy Spirit was literally ‘hovering’ over a ‘deep’? And what is ‘the deep’ - deep water? If so, is the deep being used as water is in other places in the OT and NT to signify chaos, or rebirth, or in some other figurative way? These are the kind of questions that separate out the different uses of language in the bible, not the demands of trying to ‘make the bible fit science’. This is why many early Christian writers didn’t take the creation account to be literal. Once you get past that and start looking at what the creation account was meant to convey in its original context, it starts to make sense, e.g. as a contrast against other beliefs, to set out the whys, whats and wherefores of God, man and the created universe, so that we can begin to know who God is and how to relate to him, and to each other. The only passages in the bible that come to mind for me as being something that might fall into the domain of science are some of the dietary regulations in Deuteronomy etc.

Thank you for the reply brother! Taking us back to Jesus... we agree Jesus performed miracles and these miracles affected reality, physical matter, etc... and did so presently. John 1:1-3 states:
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He [Jesus] was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made."

From this, we know Jesus was with God (in the beginning) and all things were made through him. This seems to point to the idea that the reality of creation would not need to take long ages (though if God wanted it to, He could - I agree) as would be suggested by theistic evolution. With John, we don't directly know a short amount of time, but from what we know about Jesus, we know it is possible.

Moving on. In addition to Genesis stating days with evening and morning, Exodus 20:8-11 states:
"Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy."

While I do not read Genesis as poetic or allegorical (I take it as narrative and factual), if to do so is in error, this would certainly seem very odd in that this matter-of-fact, non-poetic text sums up all of Genesis 1 in a single sentence, again stating a 6-day creation (I underlined for emphasis). A day is a day, not an age, not a billion years. This is not poetic. God didn't reveal the events of creation directly to you or me (or anyone else here), but to the one He did they keep reiterating a literal 6-day creation. I'm not sure we can claim that we know the thoughts, intentions, purposes and truths of God today, some ~3,500 years after Genesis was written, better than the one whom God actually revealed His thoughts, truths, purposes, and intentions. I propose that if we want to understand what God's word says and what it means, we start with the text, not with what science asserts. Do you see Exodus 20:8-11 as poetic, or do you see it as I do in that this is talking about actual days?

 

[klutedavid]

The evening and the morning were the first day. How many years can be before the first day?

Hello David.

Yes, that is correct.

The problem is that the sun was not shining, so the day could not have been a solar day.

Is God talking about a literal day or a thousand years as one day?

 

[redleghunter]

The problem is that the sun was not shining, so the day could not have been a solar day.

Is God talking about a literal day or a thousand years as one day?

I don't see how it may be a problem.

Genesis 1: NKJV

3 Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 4 And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. So the evening and the morning were the first day.

Regardless of the sun or moon yet to be created, God defined the light as Day and the darkness Night.